How to make colored sugar

Creating your own colored sugar is fun, easy, and simple. It's a great way to add your own beautiful colors to cookies, cupcakes, and more.

Making colored sugar at home gives you a lot of control so you get exactly the color you want. 

Just a drop of gel food coloring can give you a light pastel like colors, whereas a few drops can give you deep vibrant colors. 

You can also mix colors to create orange, purple, and green, or even tertiary colors like aqua, teal, blood orange, and more. 

Colored sugar can be a really nice touch to many things. Most commonly, it is used to decorate cookies and cupcakes.

I highly recommend using them on sugar cookies and cut out sugar cookies.

You can even use them to make eggless sugar cookies beautiful.

Gel VS Liquid Food Coloring

Gel food coloring is more concentrated than liquid food coloring which is watered down.

So, while liquid food coloring has its place - though I can't think of one right now - generally, I prefer using gel food coloring.

A bottle of gel food coloring is technically more expensive than a bottle of liquid food coloring.

However, since with gel a little goes a long way, the price is not all that different.

The benefit of gel food coloring is that it allows you to get a wider range of colors and deeper ones if desired.

It also won't change the texture of your recipes since you aren't adding liquid, so things are less likely to go wrong.

For colored sugar, you can get away with using liquid food coloring, but I recommend using gel food coloring. 

The reason I most like using gel coloring here is because it helps keep the sugar dry rather than melting it.

How Much Food Coloring to Use

That really depends on if you're using liquid or gel food coloring and what shade you want your sugar to be.

With gel food coloring, one drop can be enough for a pastel color. A few drops may be enough for a deep rich color.

If you would rather use liquid food coloring, use ½-1 teaspoon of your desired color. 

More will give you deeper colors and less will result in pastels colors.

How to Store Sugar

Sugar should be stored in an airtight container to prevent clumping and moisture absorption, and kept in a cool, dry place.

How to Store Sugar

Sugar should be stored in an airtight container to prevent clumping and moisture absorption, and kept in a cool, dry place.

WHY BAKE

Technically, you can likely get away without baking the sugar if you really don't want to.

However, baking gives the sugar a classic glass look found in store-bought colored sugar.